1897 - Shops & Offices - St John Street, London, UK
N 51° 31.197 W 000° 06.119
30U E 701052 N 5711629
This 1897 building is in St John Street a few paces north of Charterhouse Street and Smithfield Central Markets in the City of London.
Waymark Code: WMK8GX
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/28/2014
Views: 1
The year, 1897, is to be found at the top of the building on a carved stone. The relief carving shows a boar with the wording "Rebuilt by Wm Harris 1897" in the top left corner.
The building is Grade II listed with the entry at the English Heritage website telling us:
Butcher's shop and offices. Dated in pediment 'REBUILT BY W. HARRIS 1897' with low-relief carving of a boar. Yellow brick with stone dressings, roof of Welsh slate. Five storeys over basement, four-window range to south and four to east in St John Street proper; chamfered corner. The ground floor has an office entrance to no 5 in St John Street, then two window bays to shop, corner entrance and one more window bay to south, followed by shop front to no 3. The piers between have bases of pink polished granite, with pilasters supporting narrow entablatures, the whole of deliberately original design influenced by Art Nouveau; fascia and cornice; good original doorcase to office and shop entrance on no 5 with panelled doors of original design. Upper windows are flat-arched with simply moulded stone architraves, the south front being treated with greater elaboration: stone bands between windows, corbelled balconies to third floor with corbelled cornice above and flush embattled parapet with scrolled ends influenced by Art Nouveau; two windows to fourth floor flanked by cartouches, one with the intials WH, gable with boar panel and finials. The chamfered corner is blank to the first and second floors; then it is treated as a massive chimneystack with thin ribs of angled brickwork rising from and ending in delicate stone ornament. The front to St John Street has similar windows to all floors, storey band above second floor, corbelled cornice and parapet, the parapet no longer flush, and hipped roof dormer behind.
This entry was created in 1994 and the ground floor is now a Pret a Manger store - not a butcher. It is not clear for what purpose the building was constructed. It could have been a butcher's shop given the close proximity of Smithfirld Market but, market work is a thirsty business so it may have been a pub.
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